A power of attorney is not ownership.
It is the right to sign as somebody, in their interest.
Fourteen months ago she placed him at Halloway — under his own name, legally, correctly, which is the part everybody finds hardest to believe.
She did not hide him in an attic.
She put him in a licensed facility two counties away, paid by his own long-term care policy, and then she simply did not tell one person on earth where he was.
Me.
Because I was the only person who would come.
And using that same power of attorney, eleven months ago, she signed a deed transferring the house on Ridgemont from Clayton Kemp to Clayton Kemp and Vonetta Kemp as joint owners with right of survivorship.
Which means: the day he d*es, it’s hers, outright, with no probate, no will, no notice to anybody.
That’s it.
That’s the crime, and it happens about four hundred times a year in this state, and almost none of them are ever called anything.
“Is that legal?” I asked Ruth.
“An agent under a power of attorney cannot make a gift to herself unless the document expressly authorizes it,” she said.
“Your father’s document did not.
